Thursday, February 2, 2017

Mid terms this week! Remember
guys it could be worse… you could have killed your dad and are sleeping with
your mom!

A fun fact for everyone during
this week of stress and frustration:

Banging your head against the
wall burns 150 calories per hour!!

Oedipus- is
vicariously symbolic of humanity

-Does not think clearly while he thinks rashly

-He is a hero because soon he will have his
moment of anagnosis

Page 16:
“Certainly but show me a man who can force the hand of heaven”

Oedipus

oThis represents the
paradox of pre determination vs. happiness

-We can’t control everything, but we control is
our emotions, with our reasoning “gnothi Seaton”

oShould we remain stoic to outside emotions? Is
this good in all situations? We control when we can
reason- is this the ultimate control we have over our lives?

oSome believe Sophocles believe is an
existentialist- what fate is, is the sum total of our actions, which is the sum
total of our decisions.

Reading: 16-

Oedipus wants to find a man who can control fate; the chorus
thinks the next best thing is Tiresias of Apollo (Creon advised Oedipus to send
for Tiresias)

-Interesting that he hasn’t come twice

-Interesting that Creon suggested it

Oedipus sees that Oedipus is going to kill his father, and
he and the woman he loves most are wrapped in sin

In this play we have a blind seer,
but while Oedipus has his eyes he is blind to the truth, and when he sees the
truth he blinds himself

-Because of his Anger Oedipus believes that Creon
is trying to take the throne (he is thinking rashly)

oWe are our own worst
enemy- This fits together with freedom vs. happiness, we hold ourselves because
of our herd mentality, we want to dumb ourselves down, we are our own worst
threshold guardians

oDoes Sophocles
understand that gods are anthropomorphic projections of ourselves? Are we our
own worst enemies?

§The gods represent our
boundaries, (ie. Predetermination)- all in all, we control them because they are the limits we set upon ourselves

-Reasoning between Creon wanting to be king, and
Tiresias helping him

o“what
ambushed envy dogs your trail” - envy

o“Oh life so pinnacled on fame” –fame ie. Immortality

o“Oh wealth on sovereignty” – wealth and power

-Every culture has a scape goat, every culture
has this in order to renew itself, we love to successful people fall

-Seers would take birds and dissect them to see
what the gods want from them in their entrails.

-Who are you???????

-This is our unconscious, we are Oedipus, there are dark bad things in
us that we don’t want to know, you cannot repress these bad things. What Freud
shows is that is we repress things we still bring them to light in mainly worse
ways

-If we face the truth about things, we can become self-surpassing and fix them!

-Oedipus will become a hero because he will discover who he is, and he
will see who he is,he will not be able
to react well to this because he will act rashly – out of shame

If you have gotten this far in my messy notes
I commend you and hope you are having a great day!

Letter to Senator Merkley Due tomorrow at the end of class

Or Monday

You are writing a letter
Open with "Dear Senator Merkley"
A little preamble about context for the debate
Pose your opinion and reasons (optionally)
Could separate paragraphs according to reasons or sources (former is better)
Be sure to refute the opposition at some point, whether in your body paragraphs or conclusion.
Best reason last
Make it only so long as it is good
Need to use at least three sources.
Use thematically appropriate vocabulary

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Paradox:Freedom vs.
Happiness- we don’t want to be responsible for our decisions because of
the consequences that may follow

Gods are our perception of who is responsible for our fates

Pavlov- would ring a bell and feed a dog, and monitored the
pattern of food and association

Ignorance is bliss,
herd mentality, if we break out of the herd we face alienation, this is the
crab bucket mentality, we pull ourselves down because we do not want to be
alienated

Ostracized- worse
than death, because it is death while being aware, every day we live with being
outside the community, walking, living, death

Because we are
animals we have the herd mentality- stick to the middle and you’ll survive Meden Agan? Is away to conform, to excel within our society,
but not necessarily excelling on a personal scale

Notes from the Reading
Oedipus:

Prologue- Oedipus
and Priest, city is not fertile, the crops are dying, Oedipus needs to find the
cure, Oedipus sends Jocastas brother to the temple of Apollo to find out the
cause and Oedipus swears to follow whatever he is told

Freedom vs. Happiness: with freedom comes
responsibility and as humans we don’t like responsibility- pre determination is
the easiest way for us to be happy

-Ignorance
is Bliss: we don’t want the freedom, if we are relieved of the decision, we
are relieved of the responsibility

-This begins at about 600 bce

-Existentialism-
jean paul satre named it that because we are the only human in the humans whose
essence precedes our existence

oSatre
Paradox: You are condemned to be free, for every decision has a
consequence, we are a sum of our decisions

Tragedy:

Came from religions rites to Dionysus:
the god of the grape, the god of wine, the god of darkness, the god of having a good time, and the god of madness, the god
of suffering- Syncretic god

In elusius, there were festivals held for Demeter, they have
not been handed down, no one know what they consisted of.Demeter and Dionysus, we can relate to them
because they both suffered. Dionysus had a group of devotees; they loved him to
death, before the society was controlled by the patriarchy, the society was a
matriarchy. When the society was controlled by the matriarchy, there was a
ritual, they would get drunk, they would then hunt a man and tear him limb from
limb. So when the male military patriarchy took over. (Remember that men wrote
all these stories down and took keep a feminist perspective on these stories).
The fates are female. Now during the female festival they substitute a goat.
This is where scape goats come from.

Welcome to Stewart's English!

This blog is updated daily with all homework assignments and digital copies of handouts, as well as some notes from both Honors 9 and Euro Lit.

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